By the Light of the Fire
by Rebel Song
Summary: Rapunzel's never seen the stars from anywhere but her tower before.  Fluff/Comfort  but no hurt!   Takes place directly after the reprise of 'Mother Knows Best.'


"I mean because here's the thing. Superhuman good looks, I've always had 'em – born with it! But superhuman strength, could you imagine the possibilities of that? I'd never have to worry about sword fighting ever again! I mean, I'd always win! That would be amazing!"

"Uh huh…" Rapunzel sits back down on the log and scoops Pascal into her hands. She places him on her knees and rests her chin against her palms.

"So is that a yes?" Flynn stops stoking the fire and leans back to admire his handiwork. Not bad, not bad at all. "Will I have superhuman strength in my hand?"

"Huh?" Rapunzel looks up and he notices the vacant look in her eyes again. If he cared, he'd have probably asked if she was feeling –

"Are you sure you're all right?" The words were out of his mouth before he had time to think so he resumes poking the fire with a stick. Rapunzel looks back down at Pascal, who tilts his head and purrs curiously. She takes some of her hair in her hands and absently strokes it.

"Oh, I just –"

There is a rustling in the bushes behind the tree and Flynn leaps to his feet. Rapunzel squeals and ducks behind the fallen log. Flynn looks around for the frying pan, scoops it up, and holds it, arm outstretched, as he slowly creeps around the tree. He squints, looking for the source of the rustling in the bushes, then laughs.

"Blondie, come look at this deer!" He must have spoken too loudly because the deer stares at him for only a moment and bolts.

"Where? Where? I've only heard stories about those!" Suddenly, Rapunzel is at his side, frog on her shoulder, and she is glowing. Not literally glowing – he'd seen that happen no more than ten minutes ago – but she is excited and she is literally bouncing, swaying back and forth on the balls of her feet.

"I think I scared him away…" He watches as she visibly deflates. Her shoulders sag, her hair seems darker, her face falls. She looks up at him and pouts angrily. "I'm—"

Suddenly she is poking him with the handle of her frying pan and he is backing up towards the fire.

"Whoa, whoa, I'm sorry, all right?" Flynn holds up his hands in defeat and smiles his patent Flynn Rider smile. "I'm sure we'll see some more animals tonight. Have you seen… owls or bats before?"

Rapunzel relaxes and swings the pan back and forth in front of her, looking up at the sky. Flynn takes that opportunity to sit down on the ground next to the fire.

"I've been in a tower, what do you think, Eugene?" Flynn winces as Rapunzel smirks and tucks the pan underneath her arm. The frog purrs again and gives Flynn a look. He isn't quite sure what the look means, but he doesn't like it.

"I'm gonna go with yes on that one."

"Correct!" She plops down on the ground next to him and stretches out, staring up at the sky. "I've looked at these stars every night for the past eighteen years and now there's trees in the way. But I know where they all are, anyway. That's Cassiopeia, over there." She points towards the northern end of the milky stripe in the sky. "She's the wife of King Cepheus and was chained in the sky to remind others not to be as boastful as she was." Rapunzel lowers her arm a bit. "That's Cepheus. All I know about him is that he was Cassiopeia's husband." She giggles and Flynn stretches out on the grass next to her. He'd never really looked at the stars before, and here she is, naming off constellations. "And that one's my favourite. Corona Borealis."

"Like the Kingdom?"

She nods. "Like the kingdom." Smiling, she tucks her hair behind her ear and laces her fingers together above her head. "Mother says there's quite a few stories about that one, but my favourite is the one about the lost princess. That's her least favourite story, but it's the one in my book." She pouts again and Flynn places his hands beneath his head as a pillow. "No, wait, here." Rapunzel stands up and walks around the fire, gathering her hair into her arms. She kneels next to Flynn and motions for him to sit up. He helps her split her hair into two piles. They lay back down on the cool grass.

"Your hair makes for a rather comfortable pillow, Blondie."

Rapunzel smiles. "Thanks."

A breeze blows through the clearing and Pascal clicks angrily as Rapunzel shivers and he scurries to snuggle into her hair. Flynn grabs his fire poking stick and absentmindedly pokes at the fire. The breeze quickly dies and the warmth of the fire envelopes the trio again.

"So tell me the lost princess story. I don't know anything about constellations or stars. Well, I know that one there is the North Star, but that's about it." He points.

Rapunzel giggles and grabs his arm with her hand. She gently directs his arm to the left. "It's over there, Eugene."

"Oh. See what I mean?" Flynn smirks. "Absolute rubbish." He folds his arms across his chest.

"The Lost Princess…" Rapunzel sighs and looks back up at the Corona Borealis. Or, at least, what Flynn figures is the Corona Borealis. "Once upon a time, there was a kingdom in a far away Northern land. The king and queen were very happy with their kingdom and their family. They had seven sons, and the king wanted nothing more than a daughter. Of course, they loved their seven sons; they just wanted a daughter too. I mean, it's not like they hated their sons for being boys or anything."

Flynn chuckles at Rapunzel's rambling and she clears her throat.

"So… the king decreed that anyone who could ensure that the queen's next child would be a daughter would be given a handsome reward."

"A reward, huh? What kind of reward are we talking about here?"

"Eugene!"

"Sorry, sorry, continue."

"The reward's not important. Anyway, a stranger came to the castle one day and presented a golden crown to the king and queen. The crown was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever seen. It was made of gold and encrusted with the largest diamonds ever and lapis lazuli and sapphires and aquamarines and oh! I can only imagine how beautiful it was." She frowns and looks at Flynn. "Now that I think about it, that sounds like the crown you stole."

Flynn chuckles and shrugs. He doesn't like thinking about the crown. In fact, he'd almost entirely forgotten about it. He is much more interested in Rapunzel's story. "So the crown was stupendous. What next?"

"He said that as long as the queen wore the crown, she and the king would be blessed with a daughter." Rapunzel looks back up at the sky. "Two months later, the queen –"

"Wait, what about the reward?"

"Eugene! I said it wasn't important!"

"I need to know about the stranger! Characterization is important! Did he take the reward or not?" He rolls onto his side and examines Rapunzel's freckles.

"No, he didn't. But the king and queen didn't care, for two months later she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl with golden hair the same colour as the gold in the crown." She smiles. "The entire kingdom was happy. There was a huge celebration, with music and dancing and lots of food – oh, it sounded like so much fun! But then, that night, when the queen went to bed, she took her crown off for the first time in two months. When she woke the next morning, the princess was missing." Rapunzel pauses. Flynn notices she has nineteen freckles. Nineteen he can see by the dim light of the fire, that is. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "That's my least favourite part. So, anyway, they took the crown and somehow managed to put it up in the sky to guide their lost princess home. Mother says it's a fairytale, and there's no way anyone could put a crown up in the sky, and she's probably right."

"Well, I'll be the first to admit I don't know anything about stars, but I'm pretty sure they're really far away and that most likely no person's ever been up there. So… she's probably right, yes. It's a symbolic crown."

Flynn returns to lying on his back and they lie in silence for a few moments, staring at the sky. Rapunzel shifts and her leg brushes Flynn's. She mumbles an apology. And then she bursts into tears.

Flynn assured himself that today was probably the most exciting day of her life and that she was emotionally confused, but come on. He rolls away from her and rests on his left side, staring at the fire. Grabbing his stick, he pokes at the fire again. He reaches for the pile of firewood he'd brought back and is about to put another on the fire when he hears Rapunzel talking to her frog again. Initially he'd dismissed that as just a side-effect of being left alone for long periods of time, but after knowing the frog for a few hours, he found himself actually believing that Pascal understood her and that they were capable of having actual conversations. He quickly adds the wood to the fire, stokes it once more, then reclines again. Flynn yawns rather loudly – not on purpose, he's just really tired – big day, you know – and Rapunzel turns her head back towards him.

"Eugene?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you know the story of the Doe and the Wolf?"

"Uhhh, I think so. Is that the one where the doe hides in a cave and meets a wolf?" Rapunzel nods. "Yeah, I do. Why?"

"When Mother's home, she tells it to me before… I…" She squeaks out a sob and bursts into tears again.

"Whoa, whoa, Rapunzel, what's wrong?" Flynn sits up and rests his hand on her shoulder. She lets him turn her onto her back and covers her face with her hands. He awkwardly rubs her shoulder while she cries. Pascal is sitting on her other shoulder, nuzzling against her neck. An owl suddenly hoots loudly from a nearby tree and Rapunzel shrieks, sitting up and throwing her arms around Flynn.

"Eugene – I … I'm so scared."

Flynn realizes she's opening up to him again, so he awkwardly places his hands on her tiny, smooth, curved lower back and holds her. "There's nothing to be scared of, Blondie. Flynn Rider can protect any damsel!"

She sniffles and looks up at him. Her eyes are swollen, red with tears, and she's never been this close before. "What's a damsel?"

Flynn smirks. "A lovely lady, such as yourself." She smiles and a knot in Flynn's stomach – a knot he hadn't noticed was there – loosens and disappears. "Normally, the lovely lady would be a damsel-in-distress," he lets go of her to make air quotations with one hand, "but you're not in distress, so you're simply a damsel." He rests his hand back on her waist and winces ever so slightly when he feels his rough fingertips snagging on the satin of her corset. Flynn yawns again, and Rapunzel quickly pulls out of his arms.

"Oh no, you're tired and I've gotten your doublet all wet!" Rapunzel gasps and Flynn looks down at his chest. There is indeed a tiny wet spot from her tears, which seem… especially sparkly. The firelight, of course.

"It's fine, really." Flynn shrugs off her hasty apology and scoops up Pascal. "However, I do think it's time for the three of us to go to bed. Big day tomorrow, right?"

Rapunzel looks up – she had begun gathering her hair. Her face breaks into a huge grin. "My birthday!"

"That's right!" Flynn smirks and Pascal scurries onto his shoulder. "Now, you can sleep over there, between the log and the fire. I'll sleep right here, so I'm close if anything happens."

Rapunzel's eyes widen. "Like what?"

"Well… those people who don't like me might find us while we're sleeping –"

"Oh my gosh!"

"Yeah, well, I'm a light sleeper, so I'll be up and ready with your pan before they even know what hit them!"

Rapunzel laughs and it's like a bell, chiming in the breeze. His heart feels light and he smiles as he watches her carry her hair to the log. She drops it and winds it around her like a blanket. Pascal pokes Flynn's neck with his tail, and Flynn jumps. He points at Rapunzel, who is now lying on the ground, covering herself with her hair, and mimes telling a story. Oh, right! Her story!

Flynn rises to his feet and saunters over to the log. He sits down and begins. "Once upon a time, there was a doe. She was running from some hunters. She was... gallivanting through the forest, you might say." Flynn immediately notices the correlation between the doe's story and his own, and decides to embellish it. Only a little. "The doe was gallivanting through the forest, when she came across a cave. Since she was being chased, she decided to hide in the cave. End of story." He claps his hands together and stands up, eager to go to sleep.

Rapunzel giggles. "Eugene, I like Mother's version better."

"But no one dies in my version."

"Hm." She nods and looks at Pascal. "I _do_ like stories where no one dies." Pascal nods in agreement.

"Good."

"But then what's the moral of your story?"

"What, there's a moral? None of my stories have morals. If I had morals, I wouldn't be 'Flynn Rider, wanted dead or alive.'" He strikes a pose.

"Yes," she groans, managing to make "yes" into two syllables. "The moral is to be careful outside."

"Outside… what?" He pauses. "Oh. The tower." Pascal joins in the nodding this time. That frog… "I always thought it was 'out of the frying pan, into the fire.'"

"Hm, I've never heard that expression." She shrugs.

"Or something along the lines of being careful..." Flynn rubs his goatee, deep in thought. He can vividly remember his days at the orphanage, but can't remember most of the stories told – unless they were Flynnigan's, of course. He vaguely remembers something about avoiding one evil... "I've got it!"

Rapunzel rolls over to look at him.

He strikes a pose, one leg on the log, his hand outstretched as though he is reading from a book. "In avoiding one evil, care must be taken not to fall into another."

Flynn watches her tilt her head, then cock an eyebrow, before shrugging and shaking her head. "I like Mother's moral better."

Flynn grabs his chest with one hand and dramatically falls to his knees. "Oh, Rapunzel, you have wounded my feelings with your words!"

She giggles again and smiles. "Don't worry, I like your version of the story better." Flynn smiles. He rises to his feet and puts two more logs on the fire. The fire crackles and glows brighter and Rapunzel moans, smiling. "So warm!" Flynn smiles again and sits on the ground. With Rapunzel using all her hair as a blanket, he's left without a pillow, but this isn't the first time Flynn Rider's slept in the outdoors; he has a tried and true method. He finds a rock, sets it a few feet from Rapunzel's feet, and lies on his back, looking up at the stars. He manages to find Corona Borealis – well, what he thinks is Corona Borealis – and he tilts his head so that it's in the shape of an upside-down "U."

"Hey, Blondie?"

"Yeah?"

"Does the lost princess ever find her way home?"

"I don't know. _The Constellations and Their Meanings_ ends the story there." She pauses. "But I like to think she does."

"Me, too." Eugene looks across the fire at Rapunzel and smiles. She's completely covered by her hair, and for a moment he thinks she looks like a pile of gold.

"Good night, Blondie."

"Mm… Good night, Eugene." She yawns and Pascal does too. Except that his is more of a squeak than a yawn. Maybe he was just trying to fit in.

She's not a pile of gold. Not to him, anyway. He's not quite sure what she is, but for a moment – only a moment – he thinks he'd be okay without getting his crown back. Not that it was his crown in the first place. Point is, she could keep it.

But then he remembers he doesn't have a place to sleep at night, and that the crown could probably buy him his own island, maybe his own castle!

Eugene Fitzherbert falls asleep dreaming about stars, lost princesses, green lizards, and a girl with really, really, _really_, long, golden hair.


End file.
